To begin ...

As the twentieth century fades out
the nineteenth begins
.......................................again
it is as if nothing happened
though those who lived it thought
that everything was happening
enough to name a world for & a time
to hold it in your hand
unlimited.......the last delusion
like the perfect mask of death

Saturday, May 21, 2016

[The following is the
critical postface to my new book, A Field on Mars: Poems 2000-2015 (Un
Champ sur Mars), just published by Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre
in both an English & a simultaneous French edition. Christophe Lamiot is an active poet & the
editor of the Rouen
press’s Jusqu’a (To) series of books devoted to contemporary American poetry &
poets in separate English & French editions. The complete French translation of my Shaking
the Pumpkin (Secouer la Citrouille) was also published under his
editorship. (J.R.)]

(...) poetry as
elation

A Field on Mars. A field on Mars: this is how Jerome
Rothenberg tells of his writings in poetry from the last ten years. A former
title was “Divagations and Auto-variations.” “Divagations & Autovariations”
now stands as a subtitle. I like this gesture of naming, then renaming—from one
of the most prolific, far-ranging, active and successful poets of XXth-century
Anglophone America.
I like it all the more so, as there is a very remarkable and easily
circumscribable echo to naming and renaming, within the work itself. Something
in which the “To” series is most highly interested: Within the text, there are
other words, given as substitutes for the ones ending lines, not all lines, but
a number of them—enough of them to make the naming and renaming
attention-catching and remarkable. Something in which the “To” series is most
highly interested: The ever-shifting correspondence between language and
matter, between words and what they are not. To deal in translations, one has
to presuppose a matter to be translated. This “To” series deals in translations.
It so much deals indeed in translations that it considers “original texts” as
translations. It considers words as resulting from the meeting between humans
and their surroun­dings. As translating this encounter. One particular
language: A way of translating. Another particular language: Another way of
translating. Dance, music, cooking, architecture: Other languages,
other ways of translating. If the matter to be translated was purely and
strictly speaking language only, there wouldn’t be so many difficulties to, or
impossibilities in, translating. What has to be translated is already a table
of correspondences between matter and humans as represented in their words. In
other words, what has to be translated is already a translation. The “To” series
is a series in translations. This “To” series is a series in poetry as
translations.

(…) Rothenberg’s
special interest in and devotion to early poetries from all over the world

Rothenberg’s
career in poetry ranges from White Sun Black Sun (1960) to the present
times. This time expanse also gets multiplied manifold by Rothenberg’s special
interest in and devo­tion to early poetries from all over the world. Rothenberg
writes poems. He also collects poems. He also edits poems—so much so that there
may not be much of a difference between collecting and writing, according to
Rothenberg. There are indeed so many early poems from so many various
traditions that Rothenberg offers us, that any given poem we may now read from
Rothen­berg comes with echoes from previous ones, previous harvesting, previous
garnering—from layers upon layers of attentions paid to words as collecting and
harvesting, then offering human efforts to name the world, or having words
correspond to matters; from layers upon layers of poems in translations,
telling us just that: We readers, we writers come after layers upon layers of
naming and renaming, from which to collect, from which to harvest. This is a
teaching we collect from poetry. This is a tea­ching that is gathered from
collecting words. This, a teaching of words, from words: Words are traces of a
collecting, layers upon layers of harvesting and garnering human experience. To
bring forward. To forward. To a vast range of traditions, which he gathers
under the heading of “ethnopoetics”, Rothenberg makes us heirs. “To” a vast
range of traditions. “To:” a vast range of traditions. Three collections or
anthologies, as he calls them, come to the fore: Technicians of the Sacred (1968),
Shaking the Pumpkin (1972) and A Big Jewish Book (1977). Shaking
the Pumpkin is translated into French by Anne Talvaz at the Presses
universitaires de Rouen
et du Havre (2015) and naturally found its way to this “To” series—within the
“To” series. Technicians of the Sacred appears into its French
translation by Yves di Manno at José Corti Editions (2008). A Big Jewish
Book still calls for its translation into French. Rothenberg’s special
interest in and devotion to early poetries from all over the world teach us
that a poem is a gesture, or a collecting of gestures, traditionally bearing
the marks of harvesting toward sharing what is garnered. There is a
celebration: This is poetry, this is books, especially. Books are with us to
celebrate the garnering to be shared. While we read, there are shadows that
extend before us—shadows of previous harvesters, previous harvests that poetry
still celebrates. Such celebrations are reminiscent of words—of the specific
celebra­tions that words are.

(…) a heritage in
elation (…)

Besides
what may be drawn from years upon years of poetry writing, i.e. attentiveness
to poetry and beyond it, toward what constitutes poetry and acts it out, I want
to stress Rothenberg’s A Field On Mars as a proposition in elation. To
Rothenberg, poetry is elation. It enthuses us. It is our heritage. It is a heri­tage
in elation. Beyond what may be drawn from years upon years of poetry writing,
there are at least two good reasons for elation in poetry, for elation as
poetry writing. The first reason is to be able to still write more—write beyond
what has already been achieved, rename once more time what has already been
named. Writing as never-ending. Writing without an end to writing. Writing from
generation to generation. Writing as a process forward. Writing as a way
to circumvent death. As it is the meaning of one’s inheritance. As it is
comprised already within the heritage. Within poetry as heritage. The second
reason for being elated by and reaching elation through poetry, has to do with
a special letting go of etiquette and conventions. Beyond attentiveness to
poetry, Rothenberg’s A Field On Mars is
a proposition in poetry as elation, as humor brings us elation. Poetry is our
heritage. Not a thing here, nor a thing there. Not just a fish from out of
waters. But the desire and care for making things, not this one or that one—but
many, many things, a whole procession of things. Not just a fish out of waters,
but the ways in which fish may be landed, i.e. ways to fish and enthusiasm for
what has to be done for one’s sustenance. Enthusiasm for the way there is more
than one fish in the sea. One fish, two fish. Red fish, blue fish. And another.
And yet another. There is something of a classic in kid’s literature in
Rothenberg’s. There is also a letting go of conventions. Here comes to mind
again the very special way in which endings of certain lines go along with
possible substitutes in Rothenberg’s A Field On Mars. You would think
that a given line wants a specific ending. You would think that it matters that
such or such a line ends with this particular ending—not any other. Well,
Rothenberg makes you reconsider this assumption. A Field On Mars makes
you reconsider it so much, that to a certain extent words become
interchangeable. Which is a way of underlining what matters most in words:
Their being with us, whatever they are, their being used and re-used, again and
again. Words in our hands, words as gestures. As a result of this reconsidering
of words, precise lexical meanings as collected in dictionaries fade in
importance, as compared to the presence of words in our activities, in our
daily routines and actions. Isn’t it elation for us?

A
field on Mars: an expanse of grass, from the most impro­bable of places; soil
to be tilled, on a planet that does not look like very welcoming to man, or to
life in general. “A field on Mars” sounds pretty idealistic. Seems to be
very far-fetched, indeed. Could poetry be a field on Mars? Could it finally be
that, after years and years of practice and thought, exposition to poetry and
striving toward it, poetry equal some expanse of grass from the most improbable
of places? What wisdom is there to be derived from such an equation?

Reader, if you’ve
not read the work itself, yet, you may at first sight have construed its title
as stressing the ever-growing rarity of poetry within our world, or in our
societies—how man decides to organize this world, or most men, apparently.
Within such a context, poetry does appear as a rarity. Yet, such an inter­pretation
does not give credit to the full range of Rothenberg’s meaning. A field on
Mars, OK. Poetry as a field on Mars: OK. Yet the meaning of poetry as elation
in Rothenberg’s A Field on Mars is that an expanse of grass may grow
from it on the barest, most inhospitable of planets. Poetry as elation: despite
dire circumstances, there is still hope, through heritage, through poetry,
through the enthusiasm that poetry’s task is to convey. Rothenberg does not
think about poetry as anything else but a heritage. A poem: a heritage. To
write a poem: to inherit. To deal in harvesting: To deal in inheriting. To deal
in tradition. To deal in forwarding. What is it that we want to forward our
children? This or that? No. What we want to hand over is this handing over,
precisely. This is the significance of poetry. This is one of the main teachings
of ethnopoetics. With Shaking the Pumpkin, Rothenberg states or
re-states the following: We want to forward dynamics, we want to bestow
energies, enthusiasm and elation. Poetry as elation.

(…) only sharing, infinite sharing

A
word. Another. A word for another. This one. That one. This. That. One. One and
the same thing. What is common to a word and another? What is it that makes
them interchangeable? That one can be put instead of the other? Just
ending sonorities? Rhymes? There is something that sounds common in between two
words. Between this one and that one. Between any two words, indeed? What is
it? What about the interest of the rhyme, any rhyme indeed? Taking into account
that they can be interchangeable. Perfectly interchangeable. Couldn’t it be
assigned to something else than pure sound being repeated? And what if the
interest in rhymes did not only pertain to similarities of sound? Did pertain
to something that similari­ties in sound only represented? Marked? Suggested?
Designated, in turn? To which it pointed? Not being it, itself. This is one of
the strongest propositions in and of A Field on Mars:
Words are revealed through poetry and its rhyming as not so much separate
entities, with such or such a meaning, or even such or such a material
signature or composition. Words are beyond the markings that linguistics make
them to be. Markings with which linguistics have made us used to considering
first, when thinking about words. Rothenberg says: Look, hear, weigh, touch,
feel, consider, this is where humans have been, this is the sign and flesh and
signature and shadow of our ancestry and lineage, our past, present and future,
this is the trail, the human trail, this is where there is nothing to hide,
nothing to fear, only sharing, infinite sharing.

Christophe Lamiot
Enos, June 2015, Paris[The following is the
critical postface to my new book, A Field on Mars: Poems 2000-2015 (Un
Champ sur Mars), just published by Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre
in both an English & a simultaneous French edition. Christophe Lamiot is an active poet & the
editor of the Rouen
press’s Jusqu’a (To) series of books devoted to contemporary American poetry &
poets in separate English & French editions. The complete French translation of my Shaking
the Pumpkin (Secouer la Citrouille) was also published under his
editorship. (J.R.)]

(...) poetry as
elation

A Field on Mars. A field on Mars: this is how Jerome
Rothenberg tells of his writings in poetry from the last ten years. A former
title was “Divagations and Auto-variations.” “Divagations & Autovariations”
now stands as a subtitle. I like this gesture of naming, then renaming—from one
of the most prolific, far-ranging, active and successful poets of XXth-century
Anglophone America.
I like it all the more so, as there is a very remarkable and easily
circumscribable echo to naming and renaming, within the work itself. Something
in which the “To” series is most highly interested: Within the text, there are
other words, given as substitutes for the ones ending lines, not all lines, but
a number of them—enough of them to make the naming and renaming
attention-catching and remarkable. Something in which the “To” series is most
highly interested: The ever-shifting correspondence between language and
matter, between words and what they are not. To deal in translations, one has
to presuppose a matter to be translated. This “To” series deals in translations.
It so much deals indeed in translations that it considers “original texts” as
translations. It considers words as resulting from the meeting between humans
and their surroun­dings. As translating this encounter. One particular
language: A way of translating. Another particular language: Another way of
translating. Dance, music, cooking, architecture: Other languages,
other ways of translating. If the matter to be translated was purely and
strictly speaking language only, there wouldn’t be so many difficulties to, or
impossibilities in, translating. What has to be translated is already a table
of correspondences between matter and humans as represented in their words. In
other words, what has to be translated is already a translation. The “To” series
is a series in translations. This “To” series is a series in poetry as
translations.

(…) Rothenberg’s
special interest in and devotion to early poetries from all over the world

Rothenberg’s
career in poetry ranges from White Sun Black Sun (1960) to the present
times. This time expanse also gets multiplied manifold by Rothenberg’s special
interest in and devo­tion to early poetries from all over the world. Rothenberg
writes poems. He also collects poems. He also edits poems—so much so that there
may not be much of a difference between collecting and writing, according to
Rothenberg. There are indeed so many early poems from so many various
traditions that Rothenberg offers us, that any given poem we may now read from
Rothen­berg comes with echoes from previous ones, previous harvesting, previous
garnering—from layers upon layers of attentions paid to words as collecting and
harvesting, then offering human efforts to name the world, or having words
correspond to matters; from layers upon layers of poems in translations,
telling us just that: We readers, we writers come after layers upon layers of
naming and renaming, from which to collect, from which to harvest. This is a
teaching we collect from poetry. This is a tea­ching that is gathered from
collecting words. This, a teaching of words, from words: Words are traces of a
collecting, layers upon layers of harvesting and garnering human experience. To
bring forward. To forward. To a vast range of traditions, which he gathers
under the heading of “ethnopoetics”, Rothenberg makes us heirs. “To” a vast
range of traditions. “To:” a vast range of traditions. Three collections or
anthologies, as he calls them, come to the fore: Technicians of the Sacred (1968),
Shaking the Pumpkin (1972) and A Big Jewish Book (1977). Shaking
the Pumpkin is translated into French by Anne Talvaz at the Presses
universitaires de Rouen
et du Havre (2015) and naturally found its way to this “To” series—within the
“To” series. Technicians of the Sacred appears into its French
translation by Yves di Manno at José Corti Editions (2008). A Big Jewish
Book still calls for its translation into French. Rothenberg’s special
interest in and devotion to early poetries from all over the world teach us
that a poem is a gesture, or a collecting of gestures, traditionally bearing
the marks of harvesting toward sharing what is garnered. There is a
celebration: This is poetry, this is books, especially. Books are with us to
celebrate the garnering to be shared. While we read, there are shadows that
extend before us—shadows of previous harvesters, previous harvests that poetry
still celebrates. Such celebrations are reminiscent of words—of the specific
celebra­tions that words are.

(…) a heritage in
elation (…)

Besides
what may be drawn from years upon years of poetry writing, i.e. attentiveness
to poetry and beyond it, toward what constitutes poetry and acts it out, I want
to stress Rothenberg’s A Field On Mars as a proposition in elation. To
Rothenberg, poetry is elation. It enthuses us. It is our heritage. It is a heri­tage
in elation. Beyond what may be drawn from years upon years of poetry writing,
there are at least two good reasons for elation in poetry, for elation as
poetry writing. The first reason is to be able to still write more—write beyond
what has already been achieved, rename once more time what has already been
named. Writing as never-ending. Writing without an end to writing. Writing from
generation to generation. Writing as a process forward. Writing as a way
to circumvent death. As it is the meaning of one’s inheritance. As it is
comprised already within the heritage. Within poetry as heritage. The second
reason for being elated by and reaching elation through poetry, has to do with
a special letting go of etiquette and conventions. Beyond attentiveness to
poetry, Rothenberg’s A Field On Mars is
a proposition in poetry as elation, as humor brings us elation. Poetry is our
heritage. Not a thing here, nor a thing there. Not just a fish from out of
waters. But the desire and care for making things, not this one or that one—but
many, many things, a whole procession of things. Not just a fish out of waters,
but the ways in which fish may be landed, i.e. ways to fish and enthusiasm for
what has to be done for one’s sustenance. Enthusiasm for the way there is more
than one fish in the sea. One fish, two fish. Red fish, blue fish. And another.
And yet another. There is something of a classic in kid’s literature in
Rothenberg’s. There is also a letting go of conventions. Here comes to mind
again the very special way in which endings of certain lines go along with
possible substitutes in Rothenberg’s A Field On Mars. You would think
that a given line wants a specific ending. You would think that it matters that
such or such a line ends with this particular ending—not any other. Well,
Rothenberg makes you reconsider this assumption. A Field On Mars makes
you reconsider it so much, that to a certain extent words become
interchangeable. Which is a way of underlining what matters most in words:
Their being with us, whatever they are, their being used and re-used, again and
again. Words in our hands, words as gestures. As a result of this reconsidering
of words, precise lexical meanings as collected in dictionaries fade in
importance, as compared to the presence of words in our activities, in our
daily routines and actions. Isn’t it elation for us?

A
field on Mars: an expanse of grass, from the most impro­bable of places; soil
to be tilled, on a planet that does not look like very welcoming to man, or to
life in general. “A field on Mars” sounds pretty idealistic. Seems to be
very far-fetched, indeed. Could poetry be a field on Mars? Could it finally be
that, after years and years of practice and thought, exposition to poetry and
striving toward it, poetry equal some expanse of grass from the most improbable
of places? What wisdom is there to be derived from such an equation?

Reader, if you’ve
not read the work itself, yet, you may at first sight have construed its title
as stressing the ever-growing rarity of poetry within our world, or in our
societies—how man decides to organize this world, or most men, apparently.
Within such a context, poetry does appear as a rarity. Yet, such an inter­pretation
does not give credit to the full range of Rothenberg’s meaning. A field on
Mars, OK. Poetry as a field on Mars: OK. Yet the meaning of poetry as elation
in Rothenberg’s A Field on Mars is that an expanse of grass may grow
from it on the barest, most inhospitable of planets. Poetry as elation: despite
dire circumstances, there is still hope, through heritage, through poetry,
through the enthusiasm that poetry’s task is to convey. Rothenberg does not
think about poetry as anything else but a heritage. A poem: a heritage. To
write a poem: to inherit. To deal in harvesting: To deal in inheriting. To deal
in tradition. To deal in forwarding. What is it that we want to forward our
children? This or that? No. What we want to hand over is this handing over,
precisely. This is the significance of poetry. This is one of the main teachings
of ethnopoetics. With Shaking the Pumpkin, Rothenberg states or
re-states the following: We want to forward dynamics, we want to bestow
energies, enthusiasm and elation. Poetry as elation.

(…) only sharing, infinite sharing

A
word. Another. A word for another. This one. That one. This. That. One. One and
the same thing. What is common to a word and another? What is it that makes
them interchangeable? That one can be put instead of the other? Just
ending sonorities? Rhymes? There is something that sounds common in between two
words. Between this one and that one. Between any two words, indeed? What is
it? What about the interest of the rhyme, any rhyme indeed? Taking into account
that they can be interchangeable. Perfectly interchangeable. Couldn’t it be
assigned to something else than pure sound being repeated? And what if the
interest in rhymes did not only pertain to similarities of sound? Did pertain
to something that similari­ties in sound only represented? Marked? Suggested?
Designated, in turn? To which it pointed? Not being it, itself. This is one of
the strongest propositions in and of A Field on Mars:
Words are revealed through poetry and its rhyming as not so much separate
entities, with such or such a meaning, or even such or such a material
signature or composition. Words are beyond the markings that linguistics make
them to be. Markings with which linguistics have made us used to considering
first, when thinking about words. Rothenberg says: Look, hear, weigh, touch,
feel, consider, this is where humans have been, this is the sign and flesh and
signature and shadow of our ancestry and lineage, our past, present and future,
this is the trail, the human trail, this is where there is nothing to hide,
nothing to fear, only sharing, infinite sharing.

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A PROSPECTUS

In this age of internet and blog the possibility opens of a free circulation of works (poems and poetics in the present instance) outside of any commercial or academic nexus. I will therefore be posting work of my own, both new & old, that may otherwise be difficult or impossible to access, and I will also, from time to time, post work by others who have been close to me, in the manner of a freewheeling on-line anthology or magazine. I take this to be in the tradition of autonomous publication by poets, going back to Blake and Whitman and Dickinson, among numerous others.

[For a complete checklist of previous postings through January 12, 2012, see below. The slot at the upper left can also be used for specific items or subjects. More recent posts are updated regularly here.]